This morning I came downstairs to a note from my wife taped over the stove. The top line read, “Alert * Alert * Alert.” In our 25 years together, she has left me many notes, but this was the first that began, “Alert * Alert * Alert.”

The rest of her note said to please stay inside all day with the kids and run the air conditioning because the air quality was so bad that the hospital where she is a respiratory therapist had been jammed the night before with people suffering respiratory distress. So we stayed in the house all day with the air conditioning running except for one 15-minute walkabout in the late afternoon without which my energetic and sometimes crazy dog was guaranteed to bust a dog-shaped hole through the wall in her lust to be outside. The air outside was the color and consistency and taste of some very wan barley soup. While my boy and I couldn’t make out any fires on the ridgeline in the distance, we could see large clouds stuffed with the brown offshoot of flames beyond the crest. We went to the park briefly, where the dog chased around at nothing and I hung upside down from a chinup bar to stretch out my spine, then we headed back in.

It was unusual to be inside the house all day. I remember during college and grad school and for some time afterward, I could stay inside all day either writing or playing games with friends or watching movies, but now I don’t think I’m fit for it. I ended the day with a newfound understanding of how the dog must feel: wondering when will that door to outside open again? Somehow or other I filled the day, reading every editorial inch of the Los Angeles Times (except Sports, which doesn’t count), and reading The New Yorker, and doing a massive online Sudoku puzzle, and lending advice and counsel to my 7-year-old who was engaged in a neverending war against the reviled Queen Elizabeth in Civilization 4 because she wouldn’t trade him the resources what he wanted, and prepping for a dinner I was going to cook for my friend and my kids, and cleaning up the kitchen, and having an almost two-and-a-half-hour meeting with a playwright who came by to discuss her new play that I’m directing. But finally at 7:30, with dinner finished and the plates cleared and my son and daughter arguing over who was going to perform which relevant duty in cleaning up the kitchen, my dinner guest and I retired to the back yard for cigars and drinks. It seemed somehow thoughtless and simultaneously apt to sit outside in the ashen air and smoke cigars.

Now my friend has left and my children are asleep and I’m writing this. I’ve poured salts into a hot bath I’m running. Soon I’ll be soaking away the muscle fatigue of sitting around inside pretty much all day, and then I’ll go to sleep, hoping to wake up and learn that these fires encircling the valley are out, and that my many friends who live in those hills, as well as their homes, are safe.

By the way, here’s an air quality map of my air-ea. (Sorry, couldn’t resist.) It’s 11 PM as I post this (your results will vary, depending upon when you check it), and it may show “moderate” air quality now, but I am damn sure that all day long it would have read “unhealthy for sensitive groups.” So that’s the real reason I thought it best to get that air conditioning fixed and hang around inside with a cold beer.

If you’ve been following the news from the San Fernando Valley (which is in Los Angeles county; that’s for our international readers), you’ve noticed that it’s 104 degrees today and that the hills and mountains that surround my city are on fire. It’s hot.

So this morning, of course, the downstairs air conditioning went out. My idea was to stay upstairs in bed all day drinking ice-cold Newcastle and watching obscure foreign silent films from my Netflix queue. My wife had other ideas (something that when I was a kid we called “chores”) so she presented me with a list of things to do. This list required my coming downstairs into the inferno. So, lest we risk melting into Margaret Hamilton-like puddles, she got right onto calling some HVAC repair company that had come out the last time we had truly needed air conditioning. While we were waiting for the repairman, my wife ran down the list of what it couldn’t be that was wrong, because she had gone outside and pried open some panel and looked inside and made some indeterminate determination while I was inside drinking coffee and eating an English muffin while attacking Shaka Zulu in Civilization 4 on my laptop. (These are our usual priorities.) She floated guesstimates of the damage. Here’s the one that caused me to look up and lose a Destroyer to enemy bombardment:

“If it’s the compressor, it could be two thousand dollars.”

Many streams of sweat later, the repairman arrived. He went out back outside to take a look and I played with figures in my head. Would I have to sell one of my copies of “Iron Man” #1 to help pay for this repair job, and if so, which one? And if I were going to sell one, wouldn’t it be better to wait until after the second movie opened? And wouldn’t it make sense to wait until after the recession, too, so that its value would climb? And by then, with the recession over, I probably wouldn’t need to sell it anyway, and besides, by then the multi-thousand-dollar air-conditioning repair would be far in the past, the money long spent. So, good:  No need to sell any copies of “Iron Man” #1. Phew. I went back to pillaging Shaka’s horse pasture.

Eventually, I felt cool air coming back into the house. Valorie came in and said, “Well, he fixed it.”

I said, “How much?”

“He didn’t say.”

Hm. Unauthorized work. If it came to it, that would be the first argument in my haggling. She hung around in the kitchen area for a while doing something for some time, then went outside, then came back in. So I said again, “So, how much?”

“I don’t know. He didn’t say.”

“What? Where is he?” I was trying to understand why he was still here, why we hadn’t paid anything yet, and why we didn’t know yet how much it was going to be.

“He went out to his van. He’s still there.”

Now we both stood at the front door looking at a white panel van parked across the street with “Air Conditioning Repair”emblazoned along its driver’s side. Nothing seemed to be happening. I still wanted to know how much this repair was. Then I said:

“$260.”

“What?”

“It’s going to cost around $260.”

Valorie wanted to know how I could possibly know this.  She looked at me skeptically. I told her she’d see.

A few minutes later we were called into the back yard where the air-conditioning repairman showed us the burnt-out. It sat in a box that had contained the new one, now installed. I looked at its outer casing and had to agree that it looked, well, dirty. And then he presented us with a bill for … $277. Valorie looked at me with surprise and appreciation.

“How did you know?” she said.

“I figured the time he was here, plus the probable cost of an industrial electronic component like that, plus over. And came up with $260.”

She seemed impressed. But frankly, neither of us cared. We were glad it hadn’t cost thousands of dollars, and we were really really really glad to feel cool air flooding the chambers. I had had visions of being un-air-conditiong in the airless triple-digit smoke-filled heat of Burbank through the rest of the weekend and into next week. Now, like Dante, we had escaped the inferno.

“$260 was the cost,” I said, cracking open a Newcastle anyway. “But the value was a lot more.”

Don’t worry about zombies — take action. Here’s a great site that can help you get outfitted to handle the forthcoming trouble. Remember, those Canadian researchers concluded that zombies must be dealt with efficiently and quickly. So you’re going to want to order now.

My friend Bob Stern from the Center for Governmental Studies lays out the case for a California constitutional convention. This definitely has seemed to be in the air everywhere I’ve been in this state the past nine months, and understandably so. Depending upon whom you listen to, California is the world’s 6th or 7th or 8th largest economy. It boasts the richest agricultural sector in the world, is the birthplace of the internet, has the nation’s busiest port, is the entertainment capital of the world, and is home to Silicon Valley. Even with all those resources, our schools are falling apart, our roads and bridges are breaking down, traffic is at a standstill, and it’s been 23 years since the Legislature has submitted an on-time, balanced, budget. That doesn’t sound like a leadership problem; that sounds like systemic dysfunction.

Here’s the trailer for “Colin,” the latest in a slew of zombie movies. What makes this one notable is that it was shot on camcorder, with a budget of all of 45 British pounds (about 70 bucks). And it has a distribution deal. Given the economy and the battering some studios have taken at the box office, we may start to see movies that cost less than the Carl’s Jr. Six Dollar Burger.

By the way, a recent study by two Canadian universities concludes that if zombies actually existed, an attack by them would lead to the collapse of civilization unless dealt with quickly and aggressively. My own conclusion is that Canadian universities have the funding for such important studies because of the savings says they’ve found thanks to their national health-care system.

Thought I’d post an update about the young entrepreneurs I profiled yesterday. In the two hours they were open yesterday, they grossed $17.30. Given their extremely low overhead, that was also their net income. In true entrepreneurial fashion, they are now considering quitting their day jobs, which pay a measly $2 each per week in “allowance.” I’ll keep you posted as developments arise.

There are still bright spots in the economy. All the business journals advise that now is the time to start a business. So I’d like to applaud the latest startup, which opened today in my own neighborhood. If you’re in the area, I hope you’ll stop on by. I was only the first of their many customers so far. And I have to say, the fresh-squeezed orange juice they offer was the best I’ve had in a long time!

Here’s one of those Car Plays I’m always talking about here. This is the animated version of my friend Terence Anthony’s play, “Choke,” featuring three terrific actors I’ve been lucky to work with a little bit myself (Sara Wagner, Rodney Hobbs, and Bostin Christopher). If you’ve seen Terence’s other cartoon, “Orlando’s Joint,” you know what you’re about to get: really funny, really dark. (Which is why I love his work.) Enjoy!

Choke

Oh,  surly teenaged girl working counter number four at Milt & Edie’s drycleaning

I am sorry that I’m middle-aged and of no interest to you.

And I’m sorry that I’m at your counter,

But this is where they sent me.

I can see that you’d rather watch Shakira on the jumbo video screen

Above the people who fix hems and sew on buttons.

But I just need my drycleaning.

Please.

I stopped going to Flair Cleaners on the day three teenaged girls fought

Over who would have to wait on me.

So I have nowhere else to go.

And I like it at Milt & Edie’s, I really do,

And I’ve got my checkbook right here,

And I think if Milt were here to see this

My check would be in his hand and you’d be lying dead on his floor here.

So may I have my drycleaning?

Please?

Before things get really dirty?